What's new with WhatPulse?

The new issue reporter in 6.0 worked wonders! It gave us a lot of useful insights into what was causing crashes and instability on various computer configurations and corner cases. We’ve fixed a lot of those issues, and this update should be much more stable across all platforms.

Crash fixes

• Notifications – Fixed crashes when clicking or dismissing banners multiple times during animation.
• System tray – Fixed crashes from rapidly clicking/tapping the tray icon.
• Charts – Fixed crashes when hovering over charts while data was refreshing.
• Profile switching – Fixed crash when switching profiles from the tray without opening Settings first.
• Shutdown stability – Hardened cleanup of network monitor, browser extension server, database, and heatmap components to prevent crashes on exit. Nothing you'd notice, but it should reduce the chance of crashes during shutdown or sleep.
• Heatmap settings – Fixed crashes when changing monitor setups while the heat map is open, and specifically when it was refreshing.

Platform-specific fixes

• macOS

  • Safer GeoIP database updates (no more file overwrite crashes).
  • Fixed timestamp bug that could cause timezone-related crashes.

• Windows

  • Third-party shell extensions (e.g., OneDrive/Dropbox) could cause crashes when WhatPulse was retrieving application icons. This is now handled more robustly, ignoring the extension if it causes issues.
  • Fixed rare double-launch after automatic update.
  • Improved MSI uninstall cleanup.

• Linux

  • Fixed crashes during network changes and WhatPulse exits.
  • Properly stopped packet capture thread on exit.
  • Upgraded Qt to fix monitor hotplug crashes.
  • Hid non-functional “pending apps” indicator.

Improvements

• Faster time series sync – Catch-up sync is now much faster after being offline.

A solid stability update to keep WhatPulse running smoothly in the background.

WhatPulse 6.0 is a major release, with Web Insights bringing website activity into your stats for the first time. Alongside that, this release delivers a more flexible UI, improved exports, and a long list of stability and performance improvements, especially on Windows. This version lays the groundwork for deeper insights into how you actually use your computer, while making the core app more robust and pleasant to use day to day.

Web Insights: website activity tracking

Web Insights introduces website-level activity tracking through new browser extensions, integrating your browsing activity directly into WhatPulse.

• Track time spent and activity on websites, including keys, clicks, scrolling, and mouse movement
• View website activity alongside applications inside the WhatPulse app
• Associate website stats with profiles to separate work, personal, or other contexts
• Exclude specific websites or patterns from tracking
• Export your website activity data for deeper analysis or reporting
• Privacy-first by design:
  • Only website domains are tracked; never full URLs or page content
  • Browser extensions don't run in private or incognito mode
  • Website stats are private and never publicly visible on your profile

Exports include aggregated website activity such as active time and input effort per domain, with flexible time grouping and profile filtering. Web Insights is available as part of WhatPulse Premium.

UI and usability improvements

WhatPulse 6.0 makes the app more flexible and consistent across platforms:

• The main window is now fully resizable and remembers its size and position
• Application Activity charts are easier to navigate, including forward and backward day navigation
• Dialogs, buttons, and confirmations have been polished throughout the app
• New application sync status window with detailed logging
• Time series handling has been separated from pulsing, making sure the dashboard data is not interrupted

Stability and performance improvements

• Keyboard and mouse heatmaps now render in the background to avoid UI freezes
• Better detection of hardware, input devices, and network interfaces with newer Windows versions
• Multiple fixes for startup, shutdown, and input monitoring crashes
• More reliable updater behavior, especially during restarts
• Improved handling of unusual display and multi-monitor configurations
• Integrated Sentry crash reporting on Windows, respecting the existing bug reports setting. This should help us identify and fix issues much easier.

Overall, WhatPulse 6.0 should feel noticeably more stable and responsive, especially for long-running sessions.

Professional and managed deployments

For Professional users and enterprise environments, this release includes improvements aimed at managed and shared systems:

• Kiosk mode for per-computer data collection
• Support for custom data directories and managed settings
• Cleaner startup behavior for locked-down environments
• Improved installer options for automated deployments

A few final improvements & fixes! 🛠️

• Windows: Fixed input tracking for laptops with a trackpad (issue starting beta 3).
• Improved the updater to take better care of restarting WhatPulse - which it sometimes didn't (mostly on Windows).
• Improve the design of the setup wizard, and link to the browser extensions.
• Fixed the cloud icon in the "Check for Updates" button being big on Windows computers with retina displays.
• Fixed a possible app crash on Windows shutdown (not that you'd notice).
• Fixed radio boxes not being shown in the maintenance tool, so you couldn't see what you were selecting.

WhatPulse 6.0 beta 3 focuses on Windows stability, with a significant overhaul of platform APIs for better compatibility with modern Windows versions, crash reporting improvements, and a handful of new features.

Website export

You can now export your website activity data from the Export Wizard, with four different export options:

• Active time per domain
• Input activity per domain (keys, clicks, scrolls, mouse distance)
• Activity per domain per browser
• A flat domain list with first seen, last seen, and total stats

All time-based options support grouping by hour, day, week, or month and filtering by profile.

Windows stability improvements

This release addresses a number of crashes and compatibility issues on Windows, especially on newer Windows 11 versions:

• Improved computer hardware detection on Windows 11 25H2 and newer
• Improved network interface detection with IPv6 support
• Improved keyboard and mouse device detection on minimized or headless systems
• Fixed several crashes related to startup, shutdown, and input monitoring
• Fixed dark mode detection failing on some systems
• Fixed mouse click heatmap issues on systems with unusual display configurations

Crash reporting

Integrated Sentry crash reporting on Windows, replacing the previous approach which produced unusable crash reports. This respects the existing bug reports setting and should help us identify and fix crashes much easier.

Bug fixes

• Fixed popup window titlebars not following the system appearance on macOS
• Added a hardware info window under Settings > Advanced for easier debugging and bug reports

Kiosk mode improvements (Professional)

• Kiosk mode is now only shown in Professional builds
• Registry startup is skipped in kiosk mode, as Task Scheduler is used instead
• Fixed settings-overrides.ini creation in kiosk mode install

WhatPulse 6.0 beta 2 builds on the first beta with website exclusions, a kiosk mode for enterprise deployments, UI improvements to the activity chart, and a number of stability fixes.

Website exclusions

You can now exclude specific websites from being tracked by Web Insights, just like you could already exclude applications.

• Exclude websites directly from the tables by right-clicking, just like applications
• Add domain exclusion patterns from the settings, with support for wildcards (e.g., .facebook.com, dev.)
• New setting to toggle uploading website data to the online dashboard

Activity chart improvements

• Navigate the application activity chart forward and backward by day using new navigation buttons
• Hovering over legend items now highlights the corresponding application in the chart

Window and usability improvements

• The main window now remembers its size and position and restores it on launch
• Window resizing support on Linux
• Better styled confirmation dialogs and input dialogs across the app

Kiosk mode (Professional)

A new kiosk mode for enterprise deployments that stores data per-computer instead of per-user.

• Data directory moves to a shared per-computer location, useful for shared workstations
• Managed settings mode (settings_managed_by_admin) for Professional builds

Bug fixes

• Fixed a crash on minimal and older Windows versions related to GetModuleFileNameExW
• Fixed a crash when the browser is closed before the extension pairing request is handled
• Fixed icon stretching in various places

Browser extension v0.4.0

The Chrome and Firefox extensions were updated to v0.4.0 to address an issue counting input events in Google Docs (and possibly other like-type websites).

WhatPulse 6.0 is a big step forward, with Web Insights bringing website activity into your stats for the first time. Alongside that, this release includes a resizable main window, syncing improvements, UI polish, and a long list of stability and performance fixes.

Web Insights (website tracking)

Web Insights adds website-level activity tracking through our new browser extensions.

• Track time spent and activity on websites via browser extensions
• You can use profiles to categorize your browsing stats
• Browse websites activity directly inside the WhatPulse app across the existing application views
• Web Insights can be enabled or disabled via a new setting
• Privacy-first design:
  • This only tracks website domains, not specific pages or content (so no URLs are recorded)
  • The extensions do not run during incognito/private mode browsing, and you can disable tracking at any time
  • All data is stored locally first, and sent aggregated to our servers
  • Websites will never be publicly linked to your account, they'll only appear in your private stats.
• Websites will be included in your private dashboard and other insights on our website in future.

This is the foundation for browsing insights, and we’ll continue expanding on this in future releases.

Application & data syncing improvements

• Applications now sync with category and tag metadata (This data isn’t used in the client yet, but will power future insights.)
• New application sync status window with detailed logging
• Ability to mark applications for re-upload if syncing fails
• Time series handling has been separated from pulsing, making sure the dashboard data is not interrupted

Performance improvements

• Keyboard and mouse heatmaps now render in the background, avoiding UI freezes on large datasets
• Improved handling of monitor and display changes, instantly updating the mouse heatmap
• Better display caching on macOS to reduce redundant system calls

Window and usability improvements

• The main WhatPulse window is now fully resizable
• Polished some UI elements, to give them a better look and feel
• New command-line option to always open the window on launch (--open-window)

Bug fixes

• Client API services now shut down cleanly on exit, preventing lingering ports
• Fixed multiple corner-case crashes reported via our bug reporting system
• Resolved a Linux crash related to network reachability
• Fixed settings being saved unnecessarily when you open the settings page
• Skip showing untranslated facts

You can now unlock a new badge by completing your profile. Head to Account → Profile to fill in your details and grab it.

Reminder

Today (Dec 3rd) is the last day to get 35% off the yearly Premium subscription. If you were planning to upgrade, now’s the moment.

Well, that was fast. Here's a tiny update to fix a few glaring bugs.

Bug Fixes 🐛

• The status bar will now hide application sync when Upload application info is turned off, as it should.
• Per-application uptime in the Uptime → Applications table is showing the correct values again. The collected data is good, the presentation just wasn't.
• Fixed an issue where stuck modifier keys could cause false key-combination counts. Yes, they really do get stuck sometimes.

A small follow-up to 5.11 that adds a new status bar, makes application syncing easier to understand, and packs in a lot of stability fixes.

macOS Note: You might need to reset the Accessibility permissions for WhatPulse after updating. Should take only a minute, and there's a step by step guide in our help center.

New ✨

• A status bar with..the status of WhatPulse.
  • Shows the collector status with a colored dot.
  • Shows a rich tooltip with last pulse stats.
  • Shows pending applications that need syncing. You can click it to open the Applications Sync Status window.
  • You can turn the status bar on or off in Settings → Appearance.

Improvements 🛠️

• Application syncing is now a lot less noisy and a bit faster, especially on macOS
• Smarter upgrade handling & clearer version messages
  • When your database version is too new for the app, the error message now points to the minimum required version, instead of the generic “install the latest version”.
  • After an upgrade, the app notifies the website, which helps keep things in sync.
• Geek Window behaviour on multi-monitor setups
  • The Geek Window’s position handling has been tightened up to use pixel-perfect geometry persistence. Avoids the slow “drifting” effect when you open/close it multiple times.
• Updated the macOS app icon resources to 1024×1024, so icons look sharper on newer macOS versions and high-DPI displays.
• Large upload/download pulses and other big values now display with the correct numbers instead of being cut off. This had an effect on very large upload/download numbers that were not represented correctly in the web dashboard.

Fixes 🐞

• Lots of crash and shutdown safety fixes
• This update includes a broad batch of defensive fixes based on real-world crash reports, mostly happening during shutdown or edge cases when opening/closing windows quickly.

In short: if you ever ran into a crash while closing WhatPulse, reopening the Geek Window, 5.11.1 should feel noticeably more solid.

The WhatPulse Dashboard has been completely redesigned!

You'll now find three new pages: Overview, Productivity, and Leaderboards, that give you a faster, cleaner view of your activity and insights.

The old customizable widgets are gone (sorry to the few who loved them!), but these new dashboards are built for speed and clarity — and they’re already available in your account.

Give them a try →